Your best friend

As we enter into the holiday season, we can use this time to reset the batteries and reflect on the blessings in our lives as Union brothers and sisters. With this time upon us, there is a topic that I would like to cover during this rediscovery period.
While learning about the various units, I’ve noticed there are a few folks who work in our shops who have signed off paying their union dues. I truly believe that many of these individuals have no innate disbelief in the Union or its positive impact on raising working standards. In fact, I believe these folks understand that working in a Union shop provides them with better benefits, pay and working conditions.
The individuals that I have had interactions with merely aren’t in agreement with a particular person in an elected position, or a piece of their Agreement, and—even more unfortunate—something they wanted didn’t go their way. Now this clearly is the “I’m gonna take my ball and go home” philosophy that we all saw as children growing up. My hope is that these folks may have gotten themselves in life’s “rut” and just need a reset.
We need to remember that in life negative things happen in all facets of our lives, but we can still appreciate the positives that coexist with these small inconveniences or irritations. I have thought of life as an adult attempting to utilize this “all my way or nothing” approach and how it would work in its simplest form—like this:
They say dogs are a man’s best friend, but the accompanying dog hair that attaches itself to all of our earthly belongings is not! My wife and I see our dog as loyal (yet flawed) and we are comfortable knowing that she is protecting our whole family while we are distracted. With that, my family and I work around that negative aspect of being dog owners. Now, if we were to take the approach that since we don’t like her hair on our couch and even though she is loyal and would protect us when called upon, we can no longer feed her due to this hairy nuisance, Lily would show little change at the onset … but over time our Lily girl will grow weak and no longer be able to defend us.
Clearly this isn’t how we treat our best friend, because we want her strong and although we dislike the hair, Lily is well fed. My wife and I pray she never has to protect us but if she should have to, Lily is at the ready.
This is just like paying union dues. There are flaws and minor irritations in our UAW, but how can we support enjoying all of the benefits of membership while not feeding the UAW? I will always feed the UAW and my Lily girl and tolerate the irritations because I know that a strong and healthy UAW is better for us than fighting alone.
That being said, I ask that you use this holiday season to reflect and see if the irritations of life have inadvertently led you off course. If this is true, it’s never too late to repair a relationship or rejoin the family. God Bless and I hope you have Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas. – Ben Frantz and Family